How the Cookie Crumbles
by Cotton Candy Mareep
Summary: Laney and Lillian convince Georgia to enter into the upcoming Bluebell-Konohana Cooking Festival with them, and things don't exactly go as planned. But sometimes, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. [Day 10: Cookies]


**A/N: So, my last three days of The Village Square forum's 12 Days of Christmas challenge are coming in a few days late due to some unexpected circumstances that popped up, involving a very long ride and minimal internet access, which is why I couldn't post these three fics on time. But at least I had finished writing them on time, I guess, haha. I'm still uploading them here regardless of their untimeliness, and t** **hey should all be up within a day now. Also, Georgia is freaking adorable, why have I not paid her any attention before? Shame on me, really. -CCM**

* * *

 _How the Cookie Crumbles_

"All right, let's get down to business."

The pretty blonde, Laney, finally took a seat, balancing her cup of steaming hot rose tea in one hand, and grinned mischievously at the pair sitting beside her - her longtime friend Georgia, and the newest farmer in town, Lillian. "We've got some serious planning to do today."

Lillian took a sip of her hot chocolate and nodded in agreement, whereas Georgia was already too consumed in her scone to reply.

The trio of best friends was gathered around one of the small round tables in Bluebell Cafe, sharing warm drinks and a platter of freshly baked homemade scones as they watched the snow fall lightly outside the window next to them, and discussed the upcoming festival. The Cooking Festivals, while somewhat frequent, were perhaps the most important festivals that the small town of Bluebell participated in, as they served the best means of triumphing over their rival village of Konohana, just over the mountain that divided the two towns. As a result of their vast differences in farming technique - Bluebell specialized in animal products, whereas Konohana's pride lay in its prized crops - the bitter rivalry between the two towns was strong, and the competition was fierce.

"So..." Georgia set the half-eaten scone down on her plate and took a sip of her frothy cappuccino, wincing slightly when she found it was still too hot, "What was it ya'll wanted to tell me, again? About the next Cooking Festival?"

"It's a dessert theme this month," the brunette farmer Lillian explained. "We wanted to know if you would participate in the contest this time around. I'm doing it, and so is Laney. And I know for a fact that Phillip is going to take part for Konohana, too, so it's sure to be a close competition!"

Beside her, Laney snorted, waving one hand with an air of confidence - while the sweet girl was never outright arrogant, the Cooking Festivals always seemed to bring out this new side to her. "Oh, please, like they would even stand a chance. Trust me, with my famous cherry pie recipe, Bluebell is sure to win this time!"

Georgia nodded thoughtfully, picking at her scone. After Konohana practically crushed Bluebell in the previous Cooking Festival, which had been themed around main entrees, the entire town was more than eager to make up for their last embarrassing loss, Laney included.

"We can't be too cocky, though. I certainly wouldn't underestimate the competition just yet, with my brother on the Konohana team," Lillian warned cautiously, though she couldn't hide her smile at her friend's self-assurance. It was certainly true that Laney was a pro at desserts. With her help, Konohana would surely have to step their game up to beat them this round!

"Fine, I'll do it," Georgia conceded after a moment's hesitation. "Count me in."

Her two best friends squealed excitedly, both reaching out to hug her and vowing to win the competition this month just as Laney's father Howard called out from the kitchen to ask if they needed any more scones. Georgia couldn't help but grin and share in their enthusiasm.

This time, the prize would go to Bluebell, without a doubt.

* * *

 _Ding!_

"Georgia? Was that the oven?" Georgia's father Grady called out from the next room over, his voice muffled.

"Yeah, I'm on it!"

Hastily pulling on a pair of pale orange horse-patterned oven mitts, Georgia pulled the oven door open and grasped at the tray of cookies within, quickly inspecting them and sighing in relief when she found them to be neither burned, nor underdone. These cookies had to be _perfect_ ; the best cookies she had ever baked! Not a single blackened mark was to pass under her scrutinizing gaze.

Certainly, she wasn't the _best_ cook in Bluebell, especially considering how great some of her friends were at it - Lillian and Ash were both farmers, after all, and had very close experience with the actual ingredients that made up the dishes, including milk and eggs; and Laney was the best baker she had ever seen, aided in part by her wonderful chef of a father Howard and her work at the cafe, without a doubt.

Smiling to herself as she imagined her town's surefire win over Konohana in a few hours play out inside her head, Georgia set the assortment of cinnamon sugar-dusted snickerdoodle cookies on a rank on the open windowsill to cool. A chilly breeze blew into the house with the window wide open like that, considering it was the middle of winter and snow coated the ground, but the oven had heated up the kitchen so much that it was perfectly fine for the time being. The cookies only had to sit out for but a moment, and then they would be all wrapped up for the trip to the mountaintop for the festival contest.

"Georgia?" her father called out again.

"What is it, Dad?"

Abandoning her cookies at the windowsill with one last proud gaze, like a mother hen overlooking her cluster of chicks, Georgia turned to follow the sound of her father's voice into the back room.

"What's up?"

"Oh, uh, Georgia..." Grady held a gift-wrapped box in his hands, holding it out in front of him with a look of uncertainty, as though he wasn't quite sure whether or not to give it to her. "...I thought you might like to have this now."

He finally handed it to his daughter with a smile, and Georgia examined the package skeptically as he went on, "I was going to give that to you later on as one of your Christmas gifts, but... I thought you might like to wear it to the competition tonight."

Georgia quickly ripped the shiny green wrapping paper off the box and carefully lifted the lid, exposing a thick red and white woolen _something_ surrounded by bunches of colorful tissue paper. She scooped it up into her arms, dropping the box onto the floor in the process, and held it up to her chest.

It was a sweater, like one of those ugly Christmas sweaters that people sometimes wore as a joke, except this one wasn't actually very ugly at all. There was a pattern of galloping horses embroidered onto it - of _course_ there was, Georgia almost snorted; her father was well-known for wearing his endearing horse-patterned sweaters - and it was perfectly warm and soft, that she could tell even without putting it on.

"Do you like it?" Grady looked between the sweater and his daughter nervously, as though fearful she would absolutely hate it.

"Dad, I... this is great!"Georgia exclaimed. "Of course I'll wear it tonight! Where did you find this?"

Grady grinned, obviously pleased and more than a bit relieved at the girl's reaction. "Well.. Do you remember that little business trip I took a few weeks back? To the bazaar in Zephyr Town? I found that at one of the stalls at the bazaar, and thought it would be perfect for you! The woman who sold it to me said that the sweater came all the way from a little tailoring shop in Castanet. Whoever made it, they obviously put a lot of care into its creation."

"Wow, this is really nice. I mean it. Thanks, Dad!" Georgia ran up and wrapped her arms around her father in a hug, still clutching the sweater in her hands.

Then she remembered something.

"My cookies!" She tore away from the hug and scurried back into the kitchen, leaving a somewhat startled but amused father in the room behind. "I left them cooling on the windowsill in the kitchen - I hope they haven't gotten _too_ cold!"

She quickly tossed her sweater over one shoulder and headed straight toward the window... where she stopped dead in her tracks.

The cookies she had left there... were gone, cooling rack and all.

 _What?_

Georgia gasped incredulously. Perhaps, the wind had blown the cookies outside? Struggling to keep herself calm and under control - she _couldn't_ serve cookies that had been laying around on the ground at the competition, what if they were completely ruined? - Georgia burst out the front door into the snowdrifts outside, leaving her sweater on the kitchen counter behind her.

There, underneath the kitchen windowsill, piled on top of the mound of snow gathered there, was her cookie-cooling rack. But, not a cookie to be seen anywhere in the vicinity - only a few crumbled bits of leftover dough. She gasped, too surprised to even take any note of the strange-yet- _very_ -familiar footprints that dotted the snow all around them.

"What in the... Where did they _go?_ Are you kiddin' me?" Georgia exclaimed aloud.

"Where did _what_ go?"

She whipped around, finding herself face to face with the last person she wanted to see outside her house when her dish for the rapidly nearing cooking contest was missing in action.

The young dark-haired man nodded at her as she stared at him with a look less than friendly, completely ignoring the harsh expression on her face. "Howdy there, Georgia! Is something wrong?" His thick eyebrows knit in concern. "Are you looking for something?"

Georgia narrowed her eyes at him. He had better not be poking fun at her accent again.

"Kana!" she finally sputtered, "What are _you_ doing here? Why aren't you back in Konohana, where you actually _belong?_ "

The young man shrugged, a look of confusion on his face as he watched Georgia stomp around in the snow. "I was just on my way back from visiting Lillian. She told me she had some medicine that might work to soothe sore legs in horses. You know how old Hayate's getting, she... her feet have been aching. And I'd do anything to help her feel better!"

He gestured at his beloved horse which had been standing quietly behind him, and she let out a whinny as though she knew the pair of humans were talking about her.

Georgia rolled her eyes. _Lillian_... Sometimes it was embarrassing just how friendly her good friend was with their own rivals. Probably the result of her being such a newcomer to the two towns; she hadn't grown up with the rivalry flowing through her blood.

But then again, she couldn't argue with getting a horse the proper care it needed, even if said horse belonged to her bitterest opponent. After all, she would do anything she could for her own horse, Dakota; maybe even if it meant seeking help from Kana, of all people.

Except there was still one problem...

"You... you _took_ them, didn't you?" Georgia accused, jabbing a shaking finger at the bewildered young man before her. "You're trying to sabotage the contest, aren't you? Don't even try to deny it; I'm onto you!"

"What...? What are you talking about?"

Georgia glared daggers at him. "Don't you try and play all _innocent_. You know, the cookies that were sittin' out on my windowsill!" She pointed at the open window behind her, struggling to hold back her tears of pure frustration. She wasn't about to let this buffoon see her break down just yet. "They're all gone! I baked them for the cooking contest later, and now every last snickerdoodle I took the care to make is _gone_!"

"No..." Kana shook his head vehemently, both hands raised in a surrendering sort of gesture. "Georgia, I swear I didn't do anything to your cookies. I didn't touch them. Honest!"

She ignored him completely, muttering to herself. "Nothing left of 'em, save for a few crumbs. Hah, visiting Lillian... that's probably a lie, too! A cover for what you were _really_ doing, you cheating thief!"

Georgia snorted, and before he could utter a word in protest, added, "Well, you aren't going to break me down! We're still going to beat Konohana in the contest fair and square, cookies or no cookies!"

"...I really don't know what you-" Kana attempted to explain himself, but soon realized it was a hopeless case.

"You'll regret messing with me, Kana," Georgia announced, stomping back inside with one final defiant look over her shoulder. "You'll wish you never made the decision to sabotage this competition!"

She slammed the door in his face, blocking out the warm golden light from within and leaving a _very_ confused Kana and his especially contented horse on her doorstep.

Oh, he was so good at playing dumb.

Georgia sighed as she slumped against the wooden door frame inside. Now she had no choice but to go visit Laney at the cafe and see if she could help her fix up some new dessert last-minute before the competition began. Surely the baking prodigy and her father could help her make up a quick replacement that was just as good, before she would ever have to admit defeat and disqualify her entry in the contest.

* * *

Hours later, Georgia stood at the very peak of the mountain separating Bluebell and Konohana, bundled up in her new winter sweater and wondering how she did it. With the help of Laney and Howard in the Bluebell Cafe kitchen, and their vast assortment of baking ingredients and cooking utensils, Georgia had managed to whip up a brand new batch of cookies - sugar cookies, this time - just in the nick of time.

She sighed, glancing down at the neatly wrapped plate of cookies in her arms. With any luck, they might be even better than the snickerdoodles that had mysteriously disappeared from her windowsill. They certainly looked the part, cut into neat little snowflake shapes and decorated with some fancy sort of white icing with different kinds of glittery blue sprinkles; quite pretty to look at, really. She would definitely have to pay Laney back for this, somehow.

Georgia looked back over her shoulder, out over the mountainside beyond the edge of the cliff. it was truly a wondrous sight to behold - up here at the top of the mountain, Georgia felt as though she could easily reach out and touch the stars that glittered above the heads of the intermingled crowd, like wintry cold lightning bugs. A night like this was a perfect night for the Starry Night festival that was held in Bluebell every winter, but that wasn't for a few days yet.

Hello... Georgia? Earth to Georgia!" Laney waved a hand in front of her friend's face, and Georgia quickly snapped out of her reverie, breaking her fixation on the stars above.

Huh?"

"Just making sure you're all there," the blonde girl giggled. "We can't afford to lose our concentration just yet! Pierre's sure to begin the judging soon!"

Georgia looked around - sure enough, the Cooking Festival judge Pierre had arrived and was standing just in the shadow of the trees at the edge of the clearing, unmistakable in his large purple gourmet's hat. She felt a flutter of nervousness deep in her belly, but quickly pushed it down as she stepped up to set her plate down at the judging table - she had entered the cooking contest before! This wasn't new to her. And with her best friends Laney and Lillian by her side, Bluebell was sure to win!

Speaking of Lillian, the Bluebell farmer had been off to the side talking to her brother, Phillip, a farmer in Konohana. Georgia recalled that he had also entered in this contest, and wondered who the other two contestants from the rival farming village could possibly be this time, as none of the others had set their dishes down just yet.

Scanning the crowd, she noticed that Hiro, the apprentice doctor in Konohana, was carefully holding a plate laden with some sort of dumpling-things in his arms. So he was the second competitor... but who was the third?

Before she could pause to look about the crowd any further, Lillian had finally arrived at her side with an enormous smile plastered on her face. "Georgia! You ready for this?"

However, Georgia didn't even get a chance to respond, as she then caught sight of someone else approaching them out of the corner of her eye. Someone she definitely wasn't in the mood to see.

"Howdy there Georgia, Lillian." Kana beamed at them, completely oblivious to Georgia's sudden abrupt change in mood. She turned away pointedly, still furious over their previous cookie incident, but he continued to stare at her.

"Oh! Hey, I like your sweater."

"Uh huh." She glanced at him, briefly noticing the large red and white patterned sweater he wore, embroidered with images of galloping horses, before turning her attention back to her previous conversation with Lillian that he had so rudely interrupted. Wait a minute…

Georgia quickly glanced down at herself, and the red and white patterned sweater she wore, embroidered with horses. The one her father had given her, brought all the way from the Zephyr Town bazaar.

"Hey! You idiot! We're wearing the same exact sweater!"

That was perfectly true, except for one minor difference... Kana's sweater didn't have any sleeves. That showoffy... _galoot._ Georgia frowned disapprovingly at his bulging tattooed biceps. Whatever he was getting at, she wasn't going to fall for it - _any_ of it.

Lillian, meanwhile, stifled her giggles behind her hand as Kana stared at the two Bluebell girls, actually having the nerve to look confused. "Yeah… That's why I said I liked it."

"I swear, you are so… unbelievably clueless." Lillian collapsed into another fit of giggles, and Georgia jabbed the farm girl with her elbow, still staring at the young Konohana man, her arms crossed over her chest as she scrutinized him with raised eyebrows. Where had he even gotten that sweater from, anyway?

And that's when she also noticed the platter he had been holding in his arms.

"Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me…" She frowned at him. "Why are _you_ in this contest? You don't even _like_ desserts. At all."

Before he could manage a response, she prodded the sheet of clear plastic wrap over his dish and gasped. "Are you kiddin' me? You even made sugar cookies, too?"

Grinning in an irritatingly teasing manner, Kana waved the plate of cookies in front of her face, and she caught a whiff of spice. "They're gingerbread, actually."

"But-" fuming, Georgia stamped her foot on the ground, ignoring the looks Lillian was giving her, "Seriously, why would you enter _this_ contest in particular? The dessert theme? With cookies? When you _know_ I baked cookies, too? And you hate sweets? That doesn't make any goshdarn sense! _You_ don't make any sense!"

Kana merely chuckled, not bothering to answer any of Georgia's rapid-fire questions. "...You sound so cute when you're angry."

That was definitely _not_ the right thing to say.

"Is it because of my accent?" She glared at him, and for once, he actually had the decency to shrink back, looking almost ashamed of himself. "Why, I shoulda-"

"Hey, Georgia! Lillian!" Before Georgia could utter another word, they were interrupted by Laney's return. The blonde grabbed each of her two teammates by their sleeves and, after nodding politely at Kana in greeting, she began pulling them back toward the judging table. "Come on, you two, we have to be ready!"

Sure enough, the gourmet judge Pierre was already standing there waiting for the contestants to line up, and Georgia immediately forgot about Kana and the dumb things he said in favor of the more pressing matter at that moment - the cooking competition.

"Good luck, girls!" The brown-haired Bluebell farmer Ash cheered and waved as he caught sight of the girls from his town approaching the front table to prepare their desserts for judging, and the florist Cam smiled at them beside him. Howard let out an encouraging whistle. "You got this, Laney!"

Cheryl pulled excitedly on her older brother's sleeve, jumping up and down to peer through the crowd gathered around the competition table. "Yeah, you better kick their a–"

Her mother Jessica silenced her with a scandalized look. "Almonds! I was gonna say, kick their, uh, almond jelly right out of the competition!"

Beside her, Ash snorted, hiding it behind his hand as he tried his best to give his little sister a reprimanding look as well.

Now standing at the head of the assembled crowd, Georgia shot her father a shaky smile as she caught sight of Grady grinning at her from the back, and took a deep breath to calm her nerves as she turned to look down the table at her competition. On her own team, Laney had of course baked her famous cherry pie, a huge hit with everyone who tried it at the cafe in Bluebell. And Lillian had made a pristine tiramisu, a perfect square of light cake layered with creamy mascarpone and a dusting of powdery cocoa, so delicate that it was almost a shame Pierre had to eat it and ruin its unblemished appearance.

As for Konohana... Lillian's brother Phillip had made what looked like a small, perfectly rounded cheesecake, except for the fact that it was pale green in color. It took Georgia a moment to realize that the farmer must have used matcha powder to flavor his cheesecake for a special twist on the classic dessert. Hiro had indeed made some sort of sweet dumplings as his dish, though she couldn't tell what sort of filling they had simply by looking. And with a sharp glare, she saw the stack of gingerbread cookies that Kana had neatly arranged on his own plate.

"Um... Georgia?"

"Huh?" Georgia heard a collective gasp from the crowd, and tore her gaze from Kana at the other end of the table to look at Laney beside her, who was staring at her with eyes wide in shock. "What's wrong?"

Silently, Laney pointed at the table in front of them, and Georgia glanced down... to see that her plate of perfectly frosted sugar cookies was _gone._

"...What? _Again?"_

Incredulous, Georgia glared at the spot on the tabletop where her dessert dish had once sat. Had Kana really dared to take her cookies _once again_? Was her rival really that fearful of competition with her?

Regardless of the intentions behind the second cookie batch disappearance, Georgia was positively fuming, far past the point of rational, deductive thought. " _Kana_!"

Laney and Lillian both stared at Georgia in shock, and though she didn't look out at the faces of the crowd, the girl was sure that everyone from both Bluebell and Konohana were staring at her like that, too.

But at that moment, there was only one thing on her furious mind.

"Kana, get your stinking butt over here!"

She narrowed her eyes just as Pierre was about to speak up to announce the start of the Cooking Festival judging, and stomped over to where Kana stood on the Konohana side before her teammates could make any attempt to pull her back.

" _You_!" Georgia jabbed an angrily shaking finger at his chest. "You did it again, didn't you!"

Kana raised a dark eyebrow at her, nervously glancing back at the crowd as though hoping for backup of some kind. "Um... I'm not really sure what you mean by that...?"

"My cookies for the contest are _gone_! Again! Because _you_ took them!"

She took a step toward him, and he took a tense step back, bumping his back against the table. Beside him, Hiro had thrown his arms over his own plate of sweet dumplings protectively. "No... I'm really sorry, Georgia, but I didn't have anything to do with it, honest!"

There was an awkward pause.

"Uh-huh," Georgia drawled, closing her eyes and pushing him aside as she strode away to return to her place at the Bluebell side of the table. "Sure ya didn't. Now pardon me, Kana; we've got a competition to attend to, cookies or no cookies."

Everyone - the surprised crowd of onlookers, the other cooking contest competitors, the flabbergasted judge Pierre himself - simply stared at the scene playing out before them, save for Laney, who had bent over to pick up the large plate beneath the table which had once held Georgia's snowflake sugar cookies.

Kana watched her walk away, still pretty darn confused over what had just happened, and then turned back to find that he and Georgia had been too distracted by their argument to notice that his gingerbread cookies were now... also gone.

Well, partially. And his culprit was standing right there in front of his face, chewing away at them merrily.

" _Wait_!"

Georgia turned slowly, and he waved her back with a grin on his face as the spectating crowd continued to stare. Even Pierre didn't know how to respond.

"...What?"

"Look!" Laughing, he tore the platter of what was left of his crumbled cookies from the table, gesturing at his horse that now stood beside him.

"Hayate! She thinks they're _horse_ treats!" Kana explained, his expression lightening with every second as he finally worked out the mystery in his head, and he lifted one of the last remaining cookies between two fingers. As if in response, Hayate whinnied loudly and stretched her heck forward to try and snatch the gingerbread man from Kana's grasp.

"She ate my cookies just now, and she must have eaten yours, too!"

"Huh...?" Georgia stared at him blindly. So Hayate... had eaten the cookies? Both of theirs?

She thought back to earlier that night, when she found the crumbled cookie crime scene beneath her kitchen window, and Kana had stopped by to say hello... with his horse Hayate right by his side. The horse... and a wide open window full of cookies...

She looked him in the eyes, and finally saw the sincerity there. He... was telling the truth.

No... But that meant, it wasn't Kana's fault, after all! At least not entirely, not intentionally. But she had been _so certain_ he was trying to sabotage her the entire time!

Georgia sighed - though she didn't look forward to what was coming, she knew what she had to do.

"Look, Kana... I'm sorry. Really, honest-to-Goddess sorry."

Kana grinned infuriatingly at her, while Hayate snacked on a stray cookie behind him. "Truce?"

"Fine... truce." Georgia lifted a hand to shake his, but to her surprise, he enveloped her in an enormous hug instead. She heard some scattered laughter and perhaps a whistle or two from the crowd.

"Ugh.. gerroff me!" she grumbled, her voice muffled by Kana's muscular chest, and he quickly released her. "You're embarrassing me in front of everyone!"

...Perhaps he wasn't such a bad guy after all, as much as she hated to admit it. After all, someone who cared so much about horses like she herself did couldn't be all bad, right?

"You know... Maybe we could go on a horseback ride together sometime? Just me, you, Hayate, and Dakota," Kana ventured cautiously. Was he... asking her out... on a date?

To her surprise, Georgia found herself smiling. "You're an idiot, ya know that? But.. that actually sounds... like fun. Yeah, anytime."

"Erm... Could we begin the cooking competition, now?" Pierre interrupted uncertainly, and that's when the Bluebell girl realized that she had just agreed to a date with her bitterest Konohana rival in front of everyone from both of the two towns combined.

Georgia smacked a hand to her forehead as she heard Lillian giggling uncontrollably behind her, and Pierre went on, "Since one competitor each from Bluebell and Konohana has... _lost_ their dish and technically been disqualified, it is allowable under these unusual circumstances for this particular contest to be modified as two-on-two, if all are in agreement."

Oh, she was never going to live this one down, was she.


End file.
